Wednesday 14 November 2012 15.12 EST
First published on Wednesday 14 November 2012 15.12 EST

Not that either coach was prepared to admit it but a whiff of battles past and especially one two years ago hung over Edinburgh on Wednesday when South Africa and Scotland announced their teams for Murrayfield on Saturday.

The parallels were obvious. In November 2010 Scotland met South Africa, then reigning world champions, a week after getting a fearful drubbing from the team then ranked No1 in the world, New Zealand. This Saturday, three days short of the second anniversary of that game they meet again, with the All Blacks, now world champions, barely out of town having beaten Scotland 51-22.

Last time Scotland edged the Springboks 21-17 after a huge defensive effort. This time they face the team ranked second in the world after scoring three tries but conceding six in a performance last Sunday which was totally undermined by poor defence, as one of the 2010 veterans conceded.

"That's what let us down," Sean Lamont said. "It was 30 plus [missed tackles] so no surprise that you get punished by 50 points. When we attacked we were much better than two years ago and we put the world's best under pressure. There is a lot of positives in that sense but our defence was not where it should have been and we know that. But we're hoping to do what we did two years ago, with the backlash against South Africa."

Lamont is one of four survivors from the 2010 victory, another, the tighthead prop Euan Murray, returns to the side for his 48th cap after missing last Sunday on religious grounds. The other change is David Denton, who this week starts in the back row, replacing Ross Rennie.

Rennie damaged his shoulder against the All Blacks and Lamont was predicting another bruising encounter: "We know South Africa are very direct and there's no hiding from their big men," said the Glasgow wing. "It will be route one a lot of the time so we need to up our physicality.

"That's the big one. Last time we made our hits and we kept the pressure on them and got the win. Mega hits, it's what you have to do when you play against the world's No1 and No2. Physicality is mindset and our standards should never drop. Unfortunately they did [last week] and we got punished for it."

The South Africa coach, Heyneke Meyer, announced a couple of expected changes to the side who made heavy weather of beating Ireland but not for the reasons signalled. It had been widely expected that Meyer would call in the centre Juan de Jongh but play him alongside Jaco Taute to give his captain Juan de Villiers the day off.

As De Villiers has been nursing a bad back for some time and de Jongh's omission last week had been a surprise after a stellar performance in the Currie Cup final, Meyer's heavy hints made a lot of sense. Hence the reaction on Wednesday when Meyer named De Jongh alongside De Villiers, until he suggested that the change of mind might not be unconnected with another look at the Scotland game against the All Blacks the worry about history repeating itself.

"We saw the match between Scotland and New Zealand and that the Scots scored three tries against the All Blacks — which is more than any other team has managed against them this year," Meyer said. "We lost on our last visit to Edinburgh and realise Saturday will be a massive battle."

The second change was more straight forward with the Toulouse loosehead prop Gurthro Steenkamp replacing CJ van der Linde, himself a last-minute replacement last week when Tendai "The Beast" Mtawarira returned to South Africa with heart problems. "It's great to have Gurthro back — we wanted to select him last week but unfortunately he was not 100% fit," Meyer said.